Sesame Summit 2026 – application open

Ben’s List 83

Entrepreneurship

20 CEO Lessons Learned at HubSpot on the Journey from $0 to $20billion

“We have two products, one we sell to our customers (HubSpot’s CRM) and one we sell to our employees (HubSpot’s culture).  Like your product, you need your culture to be unique relative to the competition (for talent) and you want your culture to be very valuable.  Like your product, when it is unique and valuable, your company turns into a magnet that attracts and retains terrific talent.  And also like your product, it’s never done – it needs continued iteration.”

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Artificial Intelligence

AI Leapfrogging: How AI Will Transform “Lagging” Industries

“Founders are eager to apply AI to digitized industries that seem ‘the most ready for it.’ But that’s not where we’re going to make the biggest impact.”

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Meet the Big Tech Alumni building AI startups in Paris

“It’s notable — and a little ironic — that these new wunderkinds of European AI are being propped up by US VC dollars. That said, more young AI companies made on the continent can only be positive if Europe is trying to avoid a Silicon Valley hegemony of the latest wave of digital disruption.”

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AI, Digital Twins to Unleash Next Wave of Climate Research Innovation

“The first miracle required will be to simulate the climate fast enough and with a high enough resolution– at kilometer-scale– to predict impacts at local granularity.

The second miracle required will be to emulate the physics of climate at high enough fidelity using AI. Generative AI breakthroughs promise new ways of predicting Earth’s climate and enabling real-time interactivity with petabytes of climate data. More importantly, AI is the technology that will help create actionable climate information from raw climate data in myriad ways, unlocking the potential of vast quantities of data to inform decision-making.”

New Showrunner AI: The Sum Of All Hollywood’s Fears

“’We are building a simulation where AI characters live 24/7, grow and have rich stories,’ said Philipp Maas, who created Showrunner AI. ‘Every week of simulation time, a 22-minute episode is generated of what happened in the AIs’ lives. Imagine reality TV for AIs.’ Maas started working on the Showrunner program last year when powerful open-source AI models like Open AI and Stable Diffusion were released. Anyone can download an open-source AI program from Git and run it on a PC with appropriate power, for free. The secret sauce is in the training of the models, and the skills required to prompt them.”

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Community

Investing in Digital ‘Third Places’

“This sense of lost togetherness wasn’t new, however; even before the Covid-19 lockdowns, the world was experiencing a loneliness epidemic.”

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Social

Why Do TikTokers Beg For Virtual Gifts on TikTok LIVE? The Weird ‘NPC Stream’ Phenomenon Explained

“Knowing how much it costs to buy virtual coins on TikTok, and understanding the various virtual gifts that can be bought with these coins begs the question; how much money does a TikTok livestreamer actually make? The rapid speed at which creators like Pinkydoll and Cherry Crush receive and react to gifts is meant to maximize their revenue, which comes out to approximately 1.3 cents per virtual coin.

By most estimates, we can gather that 1000 gifts worth 99 virtual coins each would result in a $1,287 payday. But how much of that revenue does the TikToker actually take home?”

@anialdn

This is so cringe i cannot #cherrycrushtv #cherrycrush #tvshow #fyp #fypシ #fypシ゚viral #fypage #tiktokdaily #cringe #wth #wtfmoments

♬ original sound – Ann

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Events 2 days ago

Last week, I spent three days at Bits and Pretzels in Munich — a startup-focused event with a distinctly Bavarian flavor. Think Oktoberfest meets startup conference, complete with dirndls, lederhosen, and more beer than you might expect. As someone building an AI-powered event platform, I went in with a specific mission: Observe how startups actually market themselves at events. Here’s what I discovered: GoodBytz: The power of good demos What they did: Robotics startup GoodBytz set up a booth where its robots prepared kaiserschmarrn (a traditional German dessert) all day long. Why it worked: Nothing beats seeing a product in action. While other booths had brochures and demos, GoodBytz’s robots were actually cooking. The smell, the movement and the end result stirred together an experience that people will remember and talk about. The lesson: If you have a physical product, show it in action. The old writing adage generalizes well: Show, don’t tell.  Let people see, hear and touch the product. WeRoad: The bathroom hack What they did: Posted “Missing Investor” flyers in bathroom stalls with QR codes pointing to their website. Why it worked: Pure genius. Every startup at the event was looking for investors, but the “Missing Investor” headline, while a bit on the nose, proved irresistible. Plus, bathroom stalls are one of the few places where people have 30 seconds to actually read something. The lesson: Think about where your target audience’s attention will remain undivided. Sometimes, the most effective marketing leverages the most unexpected places. Emqopter: Visual impact matters What they did: Designed a bright orange booth that displayed their drone prominently. Why it worked: In a sea of grey, white, beige and brown, Emqopter’s bright orange booth was impossible to overlook. The drone was real, too, and proved a real conversation starter. The lesson: Your booth is competing with hundreds of others. Make it visually distinctive and ensure your product is the hero. Quests: Community building using the product What they did: Created a busy, branded booth with accessories (toy car, traffic cones, a bulletin board) and used their anti-loneliness app to build communities among founders at the event. Why it worked: Quests used their product to solve a real problem right at the event, and the busy booth design generated energy and curiosity. The lesson: Use your product to solve a problem at the event — if it’s possible, of course. Demonstrate your value in real time. Dyno: Event-themed marketing What they did: Distributed branded electrolyte packs with the tagline “Your hangover ends. Your pension lasts – with Dyno.” Why it worked: Dyno aligned its messaging perfectly with the Oktoberfest theme. Every attendee was thinking about beer and hangovers, so Dyno’s goodies were quite relevant. The tagline was clever, memorable, and directly addressed a pain point most people at the event might have to deal with later. The lesson: Tailor your marketing to the event’s theme and culture. The more you tie your messaging and product to the context, the more memorable you become. So, what did I learn? Event marketing is about more than just showing up and setting up a booth; you have to understand your audience and create experiences that people will remember. Here’s what really struck me: most startups and even big companies don’t know how to leverage events properly. They book the booth, show up and hope for the best; maybe they bring some branded pens and a pop-up banner. Then they’ll go back home and wonder why they spent €5,000 in exchange for 50 business cards that never convert. The startups that stood out at Bits and Pretzels understand something fundamental: event ROI isn’t about booth size or location; it’s about strategy, creativity and planning. None of the startups above improvised on-site, or planned something the night before the event in their hotel rooms. They laid everything out 4-6 weeks before the event. A solid pre-event strategy is what separates successful event marketing from expensive booth rental.  But what matters most for early-stage startups is that you don’t need a massive budget to stand out. WeRoad’s bathroom stall hack probably cost €50 to print the flyers. A standard booth package at Bits and Pretzels would go for €3,000 to €5,500. The ROI difference is staggering when you compare the cost per meaningful conversation. That’s the difference between simply spending money and investing smartly. Building Sesamers has taught me that helping startups find the right events is only half the equation. The other half is helping them understand how to maximize ROI once they’re there. Good props aren’t a marketing expense; they’re opportunities to meet customers, investors and partners, and strike up engaging conversations.

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New Materials 3 days ago

Lios Group, the Irish startup behind SoundBounce, was a winner of JEC Composites Startup Booster 2018, and has been making significant strides since taking home the award.

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New Materials 1 week ago

Tree Composites aims to accelerate the energy transition with innovative composite joints.

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